Today's professional uses many devices to maintain personal and business communications. These devices include a pager, a cellular and/or CT-2 telephone, a personal data manager, a data terminal, and a trunked and/or conventional voice/data radio. Carrying around all of these devices is heavy, cumbersome, and impractical. Each device has a separate battery charger as well. In addition, each device has its own communication protocol, and service may not be readily available in all locations for each device.
Professionals tend to bring only their pager and perhaps a cellular phone to meetings, conventions, and business trips. If the professional's cellular phone service is not available in his or her present location, standing in line at the airport or running out of business meetings to find a phone is often not practical. Having on-hand data and phone capability is very helpful to a professional on a sales trip out of town or simply down the road. A professional could retrieve a report or sales information from the computer at the office, transfer digital photographs of new prototypes, make airplane reservations, defer incoming calls, and perform a myriad of other tasks if all of the personal devices would be available to the professional in a single compact housing.
A communication system that integrates various different voice and data communications in a single portable housing is desired.